Grade: 10/High School Subject: Biology Author: Brianne Duffy
Medal for Mendel
Standards: LS3(9-11)7b - investigating how the sorting and recombination in sexual reproduction results in a variety of possible gene combinations in the offspring of any two parents (e.g. manipulate models to represent and predict genotypes and phenotypes, Punnett Squares, probability activities).
Context: This is the lesson opener for the "Where'd You Get Your Genes?" unit. Students have just mastered mitosis, meiosis and subjects alike that are all precursors to understanding genetic movement. The amount of content in this lesson is great, but it will be given significant time to ensure students are knowledgable enough to move forward with more challenging material. Students will be given opportunity to express themselves and enjoy academic freedom in the assignment, "Let Me See Your Genes."
The high school runs on a rotating, 2-day, 90 minute BLOCK schedule. The hope is that this lesson and concepts should take about one class periods.
Opportunities to Learn: Materials:
- Gregor Mendel Powerpoint Presentation
- PPT Slide Hand Out
- Medialian Interactive
- Smartboard/Projector/Whiteboard
- Colored Pencils
- Punnett Square Practice Worksheets
- Instructions for "What Do Your Genes Look Like"
Learners: The classes are high school college prep. and honors level learners. Lessons, assessments, and assignments can be tiered based on class needs. Possible suggestions will be highlighted later in the lesson.
Environment: The learning environment is what the class is accustomed to. Students will be at their lab tables with lab groups/partners.
Objectives: Introduce topics behind hereditary genetics. Students should become familiar and feel they have mastered terms such as, dominant, recessive, genotype, phenotype, genes, alleles, traits, inheritance, homozygous, heterozygous and terms alike. Students will learn how to use Punnett squares to make genetic predictions, and will be exposed to dihybrid crosses.
Students will be able to define with clear understanding of the terms and topics required for continuing the unit.
Students will be able to hypothesis genetic rations with the use of Punnett Squares.
To track progress, students will take a quiz at the end of Phase 1. The classes should preform well*, if not, topics will be reiterated before moving on.
*Well: defined as - In a class of 22 students, 90% of the students should pass the quiz with at least 80% proficiency.
Instructional Procedures:
Opening (15 minutes):
Students will enter the class and be instruct to take out the Science Journals. There will be a prompt on the board for students to silently complete while the class is settles. A possible prompt could be this: "Today we are entering the world of genetics. How have genetics (or what you know of genetics) played a role in your life?"
After students are settled and all entered the class, I will beginning opening the lesson/unit with a few guiding questions that will encourage thought towards heredity and genetics. Note...Students were assigned a reading from their textbooks introducing heredity and Mendelian Genetics. They have been requested to copy key terms in their notebook glossaries.
By a show of hands, who in the class has a sibling? Of those of you who raised your hands, how many of you think you look similar?
Who in the class has been told, "You're a spitting image of your father/mother?"
Thinking of meiosis which we just learned, why do you think we may or may not look like our parents, siblings or families?
Can you think of any other organism that have the same mode of genetic transfer? Are their any adverse affects to certain traits? Has this affected any certain populations more then others?
Hopefully this will spark some conversation about gene selection, the progression of genes, etc. I will close the opening by explaining the basic agenda of the unit and overlying themes students will be responsible for throughout the unit. The statement could look like this: "What we begin today, we will continue for the next few weeks. We're going to cover the historic fact of genetics, dive into understand genetic probability, variations, mutations and genetics that curb our life choices daily. Are there any questions before we begin?"
Body: The "meat" of this lesson will be covered over two days, being presented in a number of forms. These can be looked at as "Agenda #1" and "Agenda #2".
Agenda #1
One activity will be on lecturing, clarifying key terms and information which they read in their textbooks. This will be followed by showing the interactive on Mendelian Inheritance. The follow up activity will be monohybrid crosses and predicting outcomes. The activity can be broken down as follows:
Opening (15 minutes) Transition:Everyone should take out their notebooks as we begin to go over some of these topics in more depth. If you need to move your seat to see the board better, please do so now.
PPT Lecture (25 minutes) - Students will be taking notes as they feel comfortable/noteworthy throughout the presentation. This is a practice they are accustomed to. Transition: Let's take a look at this quick demonstration of Punnett Squares before we move on to trying them on their own. Try to make predictions of the ratios based on what you already know.
Interactive on Mendelian Genetics (5 minutes) - Students will be instructed to make silent hypothesis in their heads/notebooks while I am facilitating the interactive on the SmartBoard. I will ask students if the results were as they predicted. If there is confusion, I will clarify before moving on to the next. Transition:I'm handing out a Punnett Square Practice sheet that you will quietly work on forthe rest of the period. We're going to do the first one on the board together.
Do an example on the board of Monohybrid Cross (5 minutes)
Monohybrid Cross Practice (20 minutes)
With the opening, Agenda 75 will take about an hour. This will leave about 15 minutes for DAY 1 of this lesson. With the 15 minutes, I will introduce their assignment "What Do Your Genes Look Like?"
Students will be explained the following as they are receiving their assignments: This unit you will be handing in a Portfolio of your work, rather than taking a unit test. That being said, all of your work should be completed to the best of your abilities so your final grade for the unit is reflective of what you have learned AND what you would accept as an appropriate test grade. There will be two quizzes, but no test. There will be many assignments along the way that will cover each topic we will cover. All assignments will be apart of your Final Portfolio.
I will at this time hand out a grading rubric for "What Do Your Genes Look Like?" All assignments will get a single short grading rubric, and these grades (based on the rubric) will be used when grading the final portfolio. The Final Portfolio will have an overarching grading scheme that will weigh into the final unit grade.
Closing: While introducing the assignment, I will be able to re-engage students in some of the key concepts covered in class. Examples could look like this:
Remember how we were able to determine which traits in the peas were dominant and recessive? Are there any traits in yourself or your family that are dominant?
What other patterns can you find throughout your own family?
How might some traits be related or determined?
Assessment:
Students learning will be assessed based on their quiz grades, their in class performance and their completion of the "What Do Your Genes Look Like?".
Tiering Options:
This lesson, or the lecture, should be pretty uniform throughout levels, but some learners on different levels may need a longer period of time to understand the material. I would suggest to allot more or less time depending on the level of the class. As far as the "What do your Genes Look Like?" assignment, it may be wise to have a higher standard, or require more depth/explanation on the assignment for a higher level learner.
Subject: Biology
Author: Brianne Duffy
Medal for Mendel
Standards: LS3(9-11)7b - investigating how the sorting and recombination in sexual reproduction results in a variety of possible gene combinations in the offspring of any two parents (e.g. manipulate models to represent and predict genotypes and phenotypes, Punnett Squares, probability activities).
Context: This is the lesson opener for the "Where'd You Get Your Genes?" unit. Students have just mastered mitosis, meiosis and subjects alike that are all precursors to understanding genetic movement. The amount of content in this lesson is great, but it will be given significant time to ensure students are knowledgable enough to move forward with more challenging material. Students will be given opportunity to express themselves and enjoy academic freedom in the assignment, "Let Me See Your Genes."
The high school runs on a rotating, 2-day, 90 minute BLOCK schedule. The hope is that this lesson and concepts should take about one class periods.
Opportunities to Learn:
Materials:
- Gregor Mendel Powerpoint Presentation
- PPT Slide Hand Out
- Medialian Interactive
- Smartboard/Projector/Whiteboard
- Colored Pencils
- Punnett Square Practice Worksheets
- Instructions for "What Do Your Genes Look Like"
Learners: The classes are high school college prep. and honors level learners. Lessons, assessments, and assignments can be tiered based on class needs. Possible suggestions will be highlighted later in the lesson.
Environment: The learning environment is what the class is accustomed to. Students will be at their lab tables with lab groups/partners.
Objectives: Introduce topics behind hereditary genetics. Students should become familiar and feel they have mastered terms such as, dominant, recessive, genotype, phenotype, genes, alleles, traits, inheritance, homozygous, heterozygous and terms alike. Students will learn how to use Punnett squares to make genetic predictions, and will be exposed to dihybrid crosses.
To track progress, students will take a quiz at the end of Phase 1. The classes should preform well*, if not, topics will be reiterated before moving on.
*Well: defined as - In a class of 22 students, 90% of the students should pass the quiz with at least 80% proficiency.
Instructional Procedures:
Opening (15 minutes):
- Students will enter the class and be instruct to take out the Science Journals. There will be a prompt on the board for students to silently complete while the class is settles. A possible prompt could be this: "Today we are entering the world of genetics. How have genetics (or what you know of genetics) played a role in your life?"
After students are settled and all entered the class, I will beginning opening the lesson/unit with a few guiding questions that will encourage thought towards heredity and genetics. Note... Students were assigned a reading from their textbooks introducing heredity and Mendelian Genetics. They have been requested to copy key terms in their notebook glossaries.- By a show of hands, who in the class has a sibling? Of those of you who raised your hands, how many of you think you look similar?
- Who in the class has been told, "You're a spitting image of your father/mother?"
- Thinking of meiosis which we just learned, why do you think we may or may not look like our parents, siblings or families?
- Can you think of any other organism that have the same mode of genetic transfer? Are their any adverse affects to certain traits? Has this affected any certain populations more then others?
Hopefully this will spark some conversation about gene selection, the progression of genes, etc. I will close the opening by explaining the basic agenda of the unit and overlying themes students will be responsible for throughout the unit. The statement could look like this: "What we begin today, we will continue for the next few weeks. We're going to cover the historic fact of genetics, dive into understand genetic probability, variations, mutations and genetics that curb our life choices daily. Are there any questions before we begin?"Body: The "meat" of this lesson will be covered over two days, being presented in a number of forms. These can be looked at as "Agenda #1" and "Agenda #2".
Agenda #1
One activity will be on lecturing, clarifying key terms and information which they read in their textbooks. This will be followed by showing the interactive on Mendelian Inheritance. The follow up activity will be monohybrid crosses and predicting outcomes. The activity can be broken down as follows:
With the opening, Agenda 75 will take about an hour. This will leave about 15 minutes for DAY 1 of this lesson. With the 15 minutes, I will introduce their assignment "What Do Your Genes Look Like?"
Closing: While introducing the assignment, I will be able to re-engage students in some of the key concepts covered in class. Examples could look like this:
Assessment:
Students learning will be assessed based on their quiz grades, their in class performance and their completion of the "What Do Your Genes Look Like?".
Tiering Options:
This lesson, or the lecture, should be pretty uniform throughout levels, but some learners on different levels may need a longer period of time to understand the material. I would suggest to allot more or less time depending on the level of the class. As far as the "What do your Genes Look Like?" assignment, it may be wise to have a higher standard, or require more depth/explanation on the assignment for a higher level learner.
Heredity Home Page